Thursday, October 11, 2012

Houdini and Lovecraft in action

Here's the latest in the growing collection of Houdini historical mash-up fiction. Houdini & Lovecraft: The Ghost Writer by Ron Wilkerson is available as an eBook for the Kindle and PC. According to Wilkerson's official website, the book is a novelization of his own feature screenplay. Here's a description:

It’s 1924, an era of emerging technology, but also of spiritualism and magic. Harry Houdini, the great conjurer and mystifier, well known as a psychic debunker, is hired to put together a team to investigate a purportedly haunted mansion in the hill country of western Massachusetts. Meanwhile, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is down on his luck and struggling to pay the hospital for treatment of his wife who is seriously ill. 
Houdini drafts the reluctant Lovecraft to join his team as his "Ghost Writer," to chronicle the magician's adventures in the paranormal. There is little love between the two vastly different men who come to have entirely opposing views of the happenings in the strange mansion. But their investigation triggers events that cause the team to become trapped in the mansion, and its members soon find themselves under attack by deadly invisible forces. Lovecraft's research uncovers the truth of the place, and it's no mere ghost story. But can Lovecraft, the believer, convince the skeptical Houdini of the real danger before they are all destroyed?

Purchase Houdini & Lovecraft: The Ghost Writer at Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).

UPDATE: The book is now available in paperback from Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).

2 comments:

  1. It sounds like a fun idea on the surface, but I wish the writers of these fictional histories, would structure their fiction around biographical fact. It would make the book a lot more interesting if the fictional story were the only fictional part. Yes, Lovecraft ghost-wrote for Houdini (and they did once meet for dinner), but the sick wife component is complete baloney (sounds more like Poe). In fact, Lovecraft completed his ghost-writing assignment for Houdini just before he was married. The typescript was unfortunately lost while boarding a train the day before the wedding, and Lovecraft spent the morning of his wedding (March 3, 1924), and the two days following his marriage retyping the assignment from his handwritten manuscript. Regarding the supernatural, Lovecraft was every bit the skeptic Houdini was -- perhaps even more so. Lovecraft was a vocal atheist who did not believe even remotely in the supernatural. His second ghost-writing assignment for Houdini was an article attacking astrology, followed by an outline for a longer work titled The Cancer of Superstition (abandoned upon Houdini's death). There wasn't much distance between these two men in the skeptic department.

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    1. Very interesting comment. Thank you. Terrific information.

      (If you click the Lovecraft tag, you'll find I have several other posts about H.P. and HH, including one about The Cancer of Superstition.)

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